KUALA LUMPUR: After decades of public service in a top university, economist Prof Emeritus Barjoyai Bardai says he is now like a gig worker and soon, many other Malaysians could be, too.
“I have contracts with three different universities, each with different terms of employment,” said the former senior lecturer from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, likening each contract to an individual gig.
These gigs or informal work arrangements are similar to those of food and parcel delivery riders as well as e-hailing drivers who sign up with different platforms and work on them full time, he said.
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Despite the fact that gig work is now associated with p-hailing and e-hailing workers, Prof Barjoyai said others such as doctors and electricians are also employed in similar work arrangements.
“Doctors who perform locums at different clinics are similar to gigs.
“These days, electricians known as chargemen also work for four to five factories at a time,” said Prof Barjoyai.
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“This form of employment is here to stay,”he said.
He believed this would be the trend for many jobs “where we sign contracts for employment with different bosses.”
“Such informal work arrangements have become an integral part of the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic made deep changes to how people work and how companies operate,” he said.
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He attributed this to the work-from-home trend during the pandemic in which some companies no longer have physical offices and would rather have more flexible arrangements with their workers.
“Since employers are looking for ways to bring down operating costs, informal work arrangements will be the wave of the future even for professionals,” he added.
With more gig-like arrangements, he said that rules must be put in place to ensure that workers have adequate social protections.
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Economist Prof Rajah Rasiah of Universiti Malaya held similar views, saying that p-hailing and e-hailing work had grown to provide a lifeline for unskilled workers especially when many were being retrenched during the pandemic-era lockdowns.
“However, given the looseness of regulatory controls on them, there should be guidelines to regulate this activity; both for the customers seeking such a service, as well as workers engaged in such activities,” he said.
A Universiti Utara Malaysia study on gig workers nationwide, of which a majority were in the p-hailing and e-hailing industries, found that 60% of them were not financially resilient enough to withstand an emergency.
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“If there is a financial shock, they cannot bounce back as they don’t have adequate savings,” said the study’s principal author Prof Shamzaeffa Samsudin.
Regulations being proposed for p-hailing and e-hailing should aim to increase workers’ bargaining power with their respective platforms so that they are able to earn better benefits, she said.
UM’s Prof Rajah said the government should go one step further and integrate gig workers into the economy and taxpayer base by issuing social security numbers to all individuals above 18 years which will be used to channel aid and subsidies.
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“Similarly, those earning above the taxable income floor can also be reached by the government to file their tax forms. The use of blockchain technology and e-invoicing can ensure that all transactions are recorded and transparent for the assessment by the Inland Revenue Department,” he said.
